Hellsbane Hereafter (Entangled Select Otherworld)

by Paige Cuccaro

  “Not in any way that counts.” I grabbed a fresh T-shirt, a bra, and jeans and took them back to my bed to dress. “Apparently this is the kind of thing I was born for, remember? Besides, there are always demons around to help if I’m outnumbered.”

  God, it was weird to say that. Was I really counting demons as my allies now? They weren’t. Not really. I knew that, even though they didn’t. But I also knew any one of them would lay their life on the line to help me—to protect their Domina.

  “You’re putting your faith, your life, in the hands of demons?” He studied me for a moment, as though he didn’t quiet recognize what he saw. “What’s going on, Emma Jane? Something’s changed. Something’s different.”

  My stomach clenched, and I tugged my jeans up under my T-shirt, then turned my back to him while I changed into the bra and fresh shirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing’s different. I mean, I’m still a little shaky, and I’ve been, um, seeing things, but…”

  “What things?” He stepped closer just as I turned back around. He looked like I’d just confessed to being mugged.

  “Forget it. It’s stupid.” I tried to move around him, but he sidestepped to stop me. “Relax, Eli. It’s probably just the stress and an overactive imagination.” And a mother lode of guilt. At least that’s what I told myself, but I really wasn’t buying it.

  “What have you been seeing?” he asked again.

  I sighed. “Fine. Just answer me this: are there such things as ghosts?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at him for a stunned second or two. That so was not the answer I’d expected. “Ghosts? I’m talking spirits of the dead walking the Earth, haunting houses, rattling chains, helping Demi Moore make pottery.”

  He blinked. “Who’s Demi Moore?”

  “Not important. How can there be ghosts? What happened to going to Heaven, eternal bliss, and the great reward?” Even if there were people in the world who didn’t earn their spot in Heaven, I knew Tommy wasn’t one of them. If there was a hereafter, Tommy deserved the best it had to offer.

  “Humans were given the gift of free will.” He stepped past me and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “The freedom of choice. Why would that gift be rescinded after death?”

  “So some people choose to stay on Earth after…y’know?”

  “Some. And some choose to come back. But their desire to do so must be very strong. Very few have a powerful enough desire to interact. Often when they do, the message or meaning is distorted. Whatever you’ve seen, whatever you’ve been told, it can’t be trusted.”

  I propped my hands on my hips, staring down at him. “It was Tommy.”

  Eli straightened, his mouth flattening. “What did he say?”

  “To ignore an archangel’s direct order and don’t let them kill the kid.” I turned, crossed the room, and grabbed the hairbrush from my vanity.

  “You must obey Michael,” Eli said.

  I ran the brush through my bedhead and pulled it up into a fast ponytail. “Not if he’s making a huge mistake. And I have to tell you, Eli, my gut tells me he is on this one. Even Tommy agrees with me.”

  “It’s not for you to speculate.” Eli suddenly stood behind me. “You know Jukar’s plan hinges on the boy. If Michael has ordered Abram’s death, then you must obey the archangel. He’s privy to knowledge we can’t even comprehend.”

  “That’s part of what worries me.” I met his eyes through the vanity mirror.

  Eli shook his head. “My mistakes condemn me. You have a choice. Don’t choose to champion evil, Emma Jane. Please.”

  “It’s not that black and white.” I turned to face him. “I have to at least try and convince Michael to reconsider. Something’s not right. I can feel it.”

  “You’d have better luck persuading the moon not to affect the tides.” Eli held his arms out, emphasizing his words. “He’s an archangel, Emma Jane, the right hand of God. His thoughts, his actions are a direct reflection of the Almighty. Who are you to ask that he change his mind?”

  “Me?” I shrugged. “I’m just Emma Jane Hellsbane—half human, half archangel, and a little bit of nothing they’ve ever seen before.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “A cemetery. Why?” I asked the archangel feeding a bushytailed squirrel atop a headstone.

  “I enjoy the quiet.” He balled his little bag of bread crumbs into the pocket of his jeans and strolled between the gravesites. “Far less likely to run into those bothersome spirits pestering me to do this or that.”

  I followed behind him, giving only a quick glance at the mix of differing headstones we passed. “I figured a cemetery would be spook central. There should be a ton of spirits floating around. Literally.”

  “If you were a spirit, would you want to linger near your decaying Earthly shell in a lonely cemetery?”

  “Good point,” I said. “By spirits, you mean ghosts, right?”

  He looked back at me, his navy blue eyes narrowing. He snorted and turned away. “No. Spirits. Freed souls on Earth. Ghosts are just a spirit’s foolish attempt at interaction.”

  “So the apparitions we see and hear aren’t the actual spirit?”

  “That’s not what I said.” He turned a corner at a mausoleum.

  I jogged to catch up, but the detailed architecture of the stone monument distracted me. With towering steeples, stained glass windows, and wrought iron gates, it looked like a miniature church—one of hundreds.

  It’d rained about thirty minutes before, and the breeze still held a cool mist that clung to the grass and trees. The stone of the mausoleums and the blacktop road below still showed stains dark from rain, and clouds darkened the sky. I turned in a slow circle. There was something familiar about the rolling hills and line after line of headstones, monuments, and mausoleums.

  It didn’t matter. I hadn’t called out to the archangel just to be summoned on a sightseeing tour around an old cemetery. “Okay, so what’s the difference between a spirit and a ghost?”

  He had moved seven mausoleums ahead of me, but our voices carried in the quiet of the cool afternoon.

  “Ghosts can’t be trusted,” he said without looking back.

  I broke into a jog again, catching up quickly enough. “Why not?”

  “Because spirits reside on a different plane. Only angels have the ability to converse intelligently between the two worlds.” He stopped at a massive oak tree, digging his bag of bread crumbs from his pocket and staring up into the dense foliage.

  “So if you can hear a spirit, it’s not actually a spirit, it’s a ghost…of a spirit?”

  “Exactly.” Michael stretched an arm up toward the lowest branch. The squirrel waiting there snatched the crumb from between his fingers.

  “Seriously dude, that doesn’t make any sense.” I propped a hand on my hip and cupped my forehead for a half beat. I smoothed the few flyaway strands back toward my ponytail, frustrated.

  He sighed and turned to look at me. “Ghost is a human word. A name given by the living to call apparitions they see and hear. The problem is, spirits don’t possess the ability to converse intelligently with the living. What comes through is nonsensical, or often a simple replay of the spirit’s last strongest Earthly impression. It’s all they can manage.”

  “But I—” I stopped mid-thought, deciding it best to keep my experience with Tommy to myself. Like Eli had said, this was an archangel I was talking to, worse than the average male. Michael was sure he was right, and nothing I could say would change his mind. “Eli doesn’t write off ghosts so easily.”

  Michael laughed, but it sounded more like scorn than humor. He turned back to the tree, offering bread to three other squirrels that must’ve heard there was an angel in the neighborhood. “Why do you continue to offend me with that name?”

  “He’s still your brother, whether you want to be a stubborn jerk about it or not.”

  “You can’t understand.” Michael offered more crumbs to furry and feathered c
reatures alike. It was like watching friggin’ Snow White. Squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, and every kind of bird came from all over the cemetery to line the branches and gather at his feet.

  “I understand that for all your claims of this great love and connection you have with your brothers, you cut them off without a second thought the moment they make a mistake.” My hands curled into fists. This was getting old. “Just seems like it should be a little harder to forget their names. Y’know?”

  He spun to face me, his hand crushing the bread crumbs in his fist. “Harder? You want this to be harder for us? You seduce our brothers, our companions, our loves, into an eternity of debauchery and self-loathing. You condemn those of us left behind to endure the raw agony of knowing they love you more. Do you know what that’s like? Do you know how that feels? And you believe we don’t suffer enough?”

  I flinched at his sharp tone and the hot wash of his power. “You’re jealous? That’s what all this is? Jealousy? Why, because their desire for us is greater than their love for you? They love us, want us physically, more than they love or want you? Unless that’s it. Is it…is it sex?” I so did not understand angel sexuality.

  “No.” Michael took a step back as though the question had caught him by surprise. “It’s not like that. Not exactly. We aren’t…we aren’t sexual beings. We love, we have relationships, but we were not made to feel sexual desire. It’s not…natural. It’s not normal. Those who do, or claim to have felt it, have made a choice. We were made to love each other, to find comfort, completion, among our own kind.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling a little like a home wrecker. Was I? “And you felt that for Eli?”

  “No.” He shook his head. My question seemed to defuse some of his anger. “No. I wasn’t in love with Elizal, as you might say. Not that the intensity of my emotion is the point at all. But I did love him. I loved him with all that I am as I love all my brothers. We knew his fall was a possibility when we saw how he was with you. I hoped his love for us, for the Father, would protect him from you and prevent his perversion.”

  “You think loving humans is a perversion?”

  “For angels, yes,” he said. “Sexual desire perverts our Father’s design. Some insist it’s a defect beyond their control.”

  I pointed a finger at him, accusingly. “You don’t believe that. You think your brothers can decide who they love, who they want.”

  “I do. But I also concede that the choice, for some, is not made easy. The daughters of men can be quite beguiling.” He turned, glancing up at the waiting animals before strolling away.

  I followed after him. “You blame me for Eli’s fall,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” I mean, I blamed me, too, but still.

  “Because it was your fault.” He didn’t look back. “If not for you, the angel would not have felt the desire for human flesh so acutely. You seduced him by your very existence and did nothing to dissuade him, despite knowing the consequences he would face. Now tell me again who professes a great love yet acts so callously.”

  Okay, yeah. He had a point. In fact, it was the same one I’d been using to beat myself up with for months. “So all this time you’ve been saying you’d help me earn Eli back his grace, you’ve been what, leading me on? I mean, if you hate me so much, why would you help me?”

  He stopped and turned back to look at me, his face stretched in shock. “I don’t hate you, Emma Jane. I simply think you are a reckless, impetuous, dangerous child. Like most humans. And I never agreed to help you.” He spun on his heel again and walked away.

  I had to blink twice before my brain could believe what my ears had heard. “Wait. Hold up there, archangel-pants-on-fire.” I jogged to catch him. “The only reason I agreed to play double agent for you was because you agreed to put in a good word for Eli, help him get his grace.”

  “Correct. The agreement was to help the Fallen you’ve been bedding. Not you. You are of no consequence. It was the possibility, however slim, that I may yet welcome home my lost brother that inspired my offer. For that, for any one of my brothers, I would make a pact with even…well, with even you.”

  “Oh. Right.” That seemed unduly harsh. Whatever. “If you want them back so badly, why don’t you just forgive them? Why don’t you just take them back—give them back their grace?”

  He sighed, lowering his head as he pulled the crumb bag from his pocket. He finally stopped and turned back to me. “Because none of them have asked. None have showed an interest in forsaking the daughters of men for their brothers, for the Father.”

  “None? Ever?” That seemed hard to believe. I’d met so many Fallen. I knew they missed their brothers, I knew how it ate at them. Surely any one of them would give anything to go home again. Unless like Eli, they didn’t know it was even a possibility.

  “None.” His fingers worked open the little sandwich bag.

  “Except Eli.” My chest tightened, thankful and disappointed he was the one exception.

  “None.” Michael repeated.

  “No. That’s not true.” My chest squeezed, and I stumbled forward a step. “I know Eli wants to go home. He wants to have his brothers back.”

  “Not more than he wants you.” Michael held out a bread crumb to the squirrel that had scurried to the top of the nearest headstone. The adorable little furball snatched it quickly and scampered away only to be replaced by another nearly identical squirrel. “Your fallen lover wishes to regain all that he has lost, but he’s not willing to trade you for it.”

  “So then what’s the point of all of this?”

  He threw a sideways glance at me then held out the next bread crumb. “The point is, you promised you could persuade him to change his mind. I’d hoped that at the very least, you could refuse his bed, thereby ensuring the first step in his return to us.”

  “I can do that.” I sucked a shoring breath, determination pumping through me like iron. “But for how long? I mean, when are you going to take him back? How long are we supposed to suffer—wanting each other and denying it?”

  “For as long as it takes.” He tossed crumbs to the birds gathering in the low branches of the trees. Three finches launched into the air, each swooping in to snag a crumb and miraculously missing the others before flying off. “There’s also the matter of the cost of his return, which has yet to be paid.”

  “What do you mean?” I stepped closer. “Are you talking about information? I’ve given you the inside scoop several times. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know Jukar had a son. But nothing’s ever good enough.”

  “That sounds problematic for you,” he said.

  “Really?” Ass. “Fine. Here’s a news flash for you. Don’t kill the kid.”

  “What kid?”

  I snorted. Seriously? “The kid, Jukar’s son, my half brother, the totally helpless human college kid you sent a small army of illorum to attack. Ringing any bells?”

  My sarcasm stiffened his back, but other than that, he seemed to ignore it. “I’m sure you believe your concerns are all that occupy my mind, Emma. That your hardships and sacrifices are as paramount to me as they clearly are to you. Of course you do. Your arrogance is astonishing. Your irreverent tone and lack of respect has made it strikingly obvious since the beginning. However, allow me to enlighten you. At any given moment there are a myriad of questions that must be answered, sacrifices made, lives that hang in the balance—angelic as well as human—all of which demand my immediate attention.”

  Wow. Make me feel small, why don’t you? “Sorry. How do you function?”

  “Multitasking.” He shook his head. “To answer your question, yes, I know to whom you refer. And your opinion on the matter of his life, or death, is not required.”

  “It’s not an opinion.” I thought about it and then rolled a shoulder. “Okay, well technically it is, but it’s a well-informed opinion.”

  “And who, exactly, has informed you on the matter? What vital information have they shared
with you and no other that would allow you to feel so sure, that would make you believe you were more equipped to decide such matters than an archangel?”

  I couldn’t tell him about Amon’s warning. He was a demon. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the evil, selfish creature the seraphim believed demons to be. Michael wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t consider for a second that a demon could be trusted. And although Tommy hadn’t told me specifically to ignore Michael’s kill order, he’d told me to trust my gut. My gut told me a dead Abram was more dangerous than a live one.

  Not that I could use Tommy’s visit as a reliable source, either. Michael would just wave it away as nonsense from a desperate spirit, but I knew there was more to it. Tommy was strong in life. I had to believe he was just as strong in death. If anyone could pierce the veil between the two planes, it was him.

  But without Amon and Tommy, what did I have? “I, um, just have a feeling.” So lame.

  A smile flashed across his face with a quiet laugh. “Woman’s intuition?”

  “Exactly.” I held my head high. “A woman who just happens to be the daughter of an archangel.”

  “A fallen archangel,” he corrected.

  “Whatever. The thing is, when I told Jukar I was worried you guys might find a way to kill Abram, he wouldn’t let me try to talk you out of it. It was like, even though he told me to protect the kid, he’s hoping I’ll fail. It’s like he wants Abram to be killed.”

  Michael sniffed with a nod, seemingly intrigued by the information, but went back to doling out bread crumbs to the growing herd of animals.

  “That’s it? A sniff and a nod?”

  “Forgive me if your intuition isn’t enough to turn me from my own sources.” One of the crumbs he threw fell beyond the notice of the herd and landed near my feet.

  I bent and snagged up the bread crumb. “Yeah, but don’t you see? This could all be a trick, or maybe even a trap. He’s pretending. There’s no way to know what he’s planning or why.” I held the nibble of crumb to a squirrel sitting on the nearest headstone. After a moment’s hesitation, the furry little critter snatched it from my fingers and ran. You’re welcome.